


bring down angels

by sunsmasher



Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Genre: (of the time loop kind), Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gore, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsmasher/pseuds/sunsmasher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rita Vrataski doesn’t fall for Apratim Hendricks because he kills her, but it’s not like anyone else ever does her the goddamn courtesy of a shot to the head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bring down angels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodbright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodbright/gifts).



Rita doesn’t start running out of bullets, not consistently, not every time, until a few months in. As best as she can reckon months, anyways, but, regardless, by about loop seven hundred and forty-go-fuck-yourself she’s learned to duck the mimic that climbs up the crumbling medieval wreck of a city wall, and to machine gun the two that drop down from the bell tower’s overhang, but she doesn’t yet know about the sneaky fucker that’s buried itself under the rubble. 

The sneaky fucker grabs her by the ankle.

What follows is a very convincing argument from Rita’s exosuit re: the inevitable superiority of machine guns vs. a mimic’s important fleshy bits, but not before Rita’s important fleshy bits spill themselves all over the remains of Verdun’s ancient fortifications. She gasps open-mouthed, like a fish, and attempts to collapse, except the suit’s left knee is bashed-in and frozen and she’s caught in the metal. This leaves her in half a kneel, one arm numb and bleeding in its armored sleeve, the other scrabbling desperately for the pistol tucked into the small of her back. Her gastro-intestinal system is seeping into the grout and stone and Rita refuses to die any death as slow as this. She has done so before and will no doubt do so again, but not by choice. Not when there is power left within her to cut this shit short and a pistol hiding in the small of her back.

Except there is no pistol, Rita finds, breath whistling sharp and painful through her teeth. She looks out over the lip of the city wall, the infested shambles of Verdun-sur-Meuse behind her, the sick yellow hills of Lorraine stretching before her, mimics swarming the horizon in numbers greater than imagining, then greater still, and thinks, _ah yes._ The pistol was made use of on the bank of the river, when the right arm gun jammed and the mimics came up out of the water, streaming scum and whipping for her legs. The pistol had been used, and then disposed of, and now Rita would bleed out on the top of the city wall of Verdun, one hand clutching at a slice in her gut like the Challenger Deep, because now _both_ machine guns are jammed and she was too stupid to keep the goddamn pistol.

“Fuck,” she hisses, and lets her head loll forwards. She hates slow deaths, hates them down to the guts no longer contained by such silly notions as “Rita’s flesh” or “Rita’s bones.” Slow deaths like this, with wounds to the stomach and blood burbling up her esophagus, make her think of the first time she died, and that makes her hands shake, and she has no time for that. This is loop seven hundred and forty-go-fuck-yourself, and fear is a luxury of the powerless. Next time she won’t let the guns jam, next time she’ll take the extra magazine, next time she’ll keep the pistol, _next time she won’t be afraid_ , and until then she will kneel and die with as much spite as she can possibly muster, however long that may take.

Blood drips from her lips and, god, she’s tired. She’s tired. The day is perversely nice, beautiful blue sky and soft white sunlight, and birds wheel overhead. She’s so tired. 

There’s a sound, suddenly, improbably, to her left. Someone says, “Fucking hell,” and Rita blinks muzzily, dispersing a fraction of the gray creeping in from the corners of her eyes.

“Sergeant,” she says, as a man leans down to check the gash in her belly, his own suit complaining at the bend. He is actually a sergeant, she can tell by the scratched-up chevrons on his shoulder plating, but when he shoots her a look like _fucking christ, are you really still breathing_ , she can see he’s got a black eye covering at least half his goddamn face.

“Maybe not a sergeant anymore, then,” Rita says, laughing, blood making her lips slide funny over her teeth.

“Sergeant enough to tell you to shut the hell up and stop bleeding, private,” the man snaps, like he actually cares if she lives, which is sweet.

“Unlikely, sir,” Rita grins as the sergeant makes some show of looking at her injuries like he’s not actively trying to avoid stepping on her intestines. “How’d you get the shiner, sir?”

“Told my captain something she didn’t want to hear,” the sergeant replies, producing a rueful smile himself. “You don’t take orders very well, do you.”

It’s not a particularly questioning question. “Not in the least,” Rita says. “You should probably just shoot me and have done with it.”

There’s a pause, and Rita opens her eyes again. She hadn’t really realized they’d been closed. The sergeant is staring at her, not with horror, or in outrage, as has happened more than once when Rita makes casual references to people putting her out of her misery. The sergeant’s calm instead, and serious, and his eyes are so dark they might as well be black.

“Yeah?” he says.

Relief floods Rita, making her go limper in the suit than she already is. She knows, in a way, why this man offering to pull the trigger feels so much like a god-given reprieve, but she skirts around real acknowledgement. It’s shame, or denial, or maybe blood loss, but she’ll set aside the time for real human introspection some other loop. Instead, she breathes, “Yeah,” and is thankful.

The sergeant nods, mouth tight, and steps back. The sun is behind him, darkening his silhouette until there’s little to see of him except the whites of his eyes and the glint off his handgun. “Your name?” he says.

“Hmm?” Rita’s drifting already, still caught in that half-a-kneel over a puddle of many things’ blood.

“Your name, private. I’d like to know it before I shoot.”

“Private First Class Rita Vrataski,” she says, twitching one wrist in a vague allusion to salute. “Of Twickenham.”

“Sergeant, well, probably-Sergeant Apratim Hendricks. I’m sorry we couldn’t have met in kinder circumstances, Private Vrataski,” Hendricks says.

“It’s all right,” Rita replies, smirking more because she’s losing feeling to one side of her face than anything else. “We can always try again tomorrow.”

Hendricks says something else, she’s fairly sure, except it’s drowned out by the blast of the gun. There’s a fractional second of consciousness in which she wonders at how quickly he put this whole business to bed, thinks to herself, _now there’s a forthright young officer,_ but then it’s morning in the barracks, and Rita’s got some shit to do.

 

* * *

 

She does eventually find him again, after a couple more loops of mostly-aimless searching and at least three accusations of abandoning her post when really she’d just rather not die in this particular manner today. He’s dead when she tracks him down, which is an interesting bit of butterfly effect, but the loop isn’t such a loss. Some sod grieving over his body tells her where he’s from (Glasgow) and in which battalion he’s serving (4th, Armoured) and even what his middle name is (Bajaj, which isn’t as funny as Rita had been hoping for). It’ll be enough to fuck with him the next time she sees him, which is one of those small, achievable goals she likes to work through while also attempting to single-handedly stop a time-traveling alien invasion.

She takes his pistol when the sod isn’t looking, because she’s disrespectful, not stupid, and goes. She’ll find him again tomorrow, like she said she would, and maybe repay that favor she owes him. In the meantime, she’s not dead yet.


End file.
